Sunlit and regal, a true palace of Men, Annuminas teemed with life around her. Brave pennants snapping in the fresh wind off the lake, strong men and beautiful women, garbed in odd clothing, danced in slow circles.
A great king of Men gazed down from his throne in a high marble tower, his eyes filled with pride as he looked down upon the dance. Then, with a rush the kings changed, again and again and again, each one the same, each different...until a voice rang out over the music in that strange accent she had never heard but knew so well. "All things end. All....things...END".
And the tower fell, splitting the great square asunder as the dancers screamed, their limbs hacked apart by unseen blades. Blood spraying like fountains as the pennants burned, and she fell down through the fissure. Down, down, down into an ancient flooded passageway, rotting corpses and molding bones bobbing in the water all around her as caskets split asunder. The crash of rushing waters and the crack of whips was deafening, a harsh laughter echoing.
Slowly, she dragged herself to her feet, using a massive great sword as a crutch. She dragged her broken body down the passage way, step by agonizing step as the distance seemed to stretch into eternity. Before her, in a pool of sickly light, a small body floated, twitching still, the water around it a corona of blood and gore, calling weakly for help. "Leaf....Leaf...."
Crying she tried to move faster but moved ever more slowly instead, and as she finally reached the body it's twitching ceased. The silence of death was suddenly absolute..no more laughter, no more waters, no more whips. Only death.
Her hand shaking, she turned the corpse, but instead of Tris or Lethril this time, the girl Finchley stared up at the stone ceiling, her cold dead eye slowly weeping blood before withering away into rot.
She turned away, she could not look, but behind her stood the man Hawke, blood still seeping from his raggedly sliced throat. "You should have stopped her, call her what you will. you Goblin. You could have kept her from this road. Your words drove her onward..." he said. "You let her die. You let me die. You let them all die, Kinslayer! KINSLAYER!"
Knowing what was to come, she looked around to see the passage now piled with body after body, hundreds maybe thousands. Hacked and torn, each one. Friends, lovers, comrades, foes...all dead.
As she finally began to scream...Xandilif woke, still screaming.
She lay curled around the base of Endien, one of the two Guardian Trees in the House of Three Graces. She rolled onto her back, still screaming, bare skin chilled in the morning light. Her palms covered in blood from her nails as her fists had clenched, she forced herself to her feet, her mind a jumble..confused, frightened, shaken, lost, screaming, screaming, screaming.
Her hand flailed out, catching the hilt of SilverWand, gripping it tightly in one blood smeared hand as the world calmed, her panic subsided. That same accent filled her mind.
She stopped screaming.
---
Once armored, she stalked down the ornate marble stairs to the great doors of the house, SilverWand still in her hand. Nearly as tall as she was, she carried the massive blade like a child's toy. She had had that dream a hundred times, a thousand, maybe more. Usually Tris, sometimes Rian, but not this. What the fecking hell did Finchley, little Sweetmeat, matter to her? Silly chit of a lastborn girl. Mudsoaked Breeland wench. Here and gone in the blink of an eye. Why should she care what she did, what became of her fragile little soul? And why was the Hamster there? Why, why, WHY?
She kicked the bronze doors open and whistled for her horse, finally sheathing the great sword across her back as she arranged the saddle.
She stopped, almost frozen, hands packing and strapping and tying. She had lost control. She knew she had when Hawke called her that again. Gawad he called her as if she were a stupid little girl. Gawad? He had no right to use her girlhood name, no right at all. He spoke and she heard her mother, filled with scorn and shame. "Gawad...it is always Gawad", Mother would sigh and look away into the sky.
She lost control. Hawke kept insisting that Sweetmeat knew what she was doing, that she had the right to do as she wished. Did she have the right to die like Tris? Did she have the right to be worn down into a fresh grave, a slave's collar around her throat? Who was he to say so, had he walked amongst the tombs? Had he let them die?
Then he called her Gawad.
Too much. The year of Rian's madness, then Cyndwin's tale, and then Annuminas yet again...too much and she snapped. She had no right to snap.
She took him by the throat..bore him back towards the fire's heat, her hand reaching for her dagger....
She could have killed him.
She would have killed him.
"My sister?"
She jerked around to find Xanderian looking at her, her head tilted. "Lif, where do you ride? We have much to discuss still.
The Champion of Dol Amroth swung up into the saddle brusquely. "We will discuss what needs discussing at the Forsaken Inn, I ride to clear a path and make certain there are no surprises. I cannot lay here idle, not now. I will see you there, whenever."
Xanderian nodded slowly, resting a hand on the bridle. "Banshee...you trailed blood along the marble all the way from Endien to the hitching post."
Lif nodded, wheeling the horse in a tight circle, knowing very well her sister would step back out of the way at the perfect moment. "I know...I do that. Tell the Hamster I need words with him. Tell him that I am...that we need to speak."
Xanderian nodded slowly as Xandilif road towards the waiting ferry.
